


there is a light (that never goes out)

by orphan_account



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 14:35:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8628277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: emily tries to be enough for two





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is so incredibly angsty and I'm sorry and if you're not here for angst just turn right around I won't be offended

She finds out through text.

Well, not exactly. The words hit her the first time over the phone, Carli’s voice raspy and harsh and thick with tears, cracking in its attempt to remain strong as she delivers the news that is racking Kelley to the core.

“Kell, I—“ Her voice is so damn _tired_ , it’s nine a.m. and she sounds so _tired_. “I’m so sorry, it’s— it’s Hope.”

“What about—“ She doesn’t ask because she doesn’t want to know, because asking will simply require an answer that will make a truth real, one that she never wanted to deal with, never in her life.

She catches snatches of what Carli says, but it’s muffled, as if she’s hearing it all while underwater — a car crash, some goddamn bastard of a drunk driver.

“I’m going to my flight now,” Carli says, and Kelley can hear clearly now that she’s in a car, probably on speaker. “I need you to be here, Kell. Please.”

Kelley doesn’t really say yes or no, her words seeming to stick to the roof of her mouth, but it’s more of a command than a question from Carli anyways.

Emily finds her an hour later, in the same position, slumped against the kitchen counter with her head in her hands. She’s just come home from a workout, and she’s cheery, arms full of snacks she picked up from the store on the way back. She stops still for a moment when Kelley’s eyes turned her, all cracked at the edges and breaking, brimming with tears, with grief, and it’s silence but Emily knows in that instance that their world is turning upside down. 

So she catches Kelley in both arms, as she’s done so many times before, when their dog was hit by a car and when they found out that the surgery went well, that Ali’s baby was a-okay, when she lost the NWSL final and when they won the Olympics. Yet somehow this weight feels heavier as she lowers them both to the ground, the tile cold under their bare legs as the sobs rack through Kelley, violent, and she thinks that the earth should be shaking, the sky caving in, as Kelley sobs out what happened.

Emily doesn’t let go. Through car rides and plane flights she holds Kelley’s hands, both of them, letting her short, stubby nails dig into the skin of her palms when the tears come back. She leads her into the Stevens’ home with an arm around her shoulders, fingers pressing into the taught muscles of her arm to steer her carefully. She only lets go when Jerramy appears, grabbing Kelley and tugging her close to his chest.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, voice cracking, and there’s a grief in his eyes, as if he’s apologizing to Kelley for both of their loss, for not taking care of Hope well enough. And Emily knows this was always his greatest fear — that he couldn’t hold Hope tightly enough, hold her as tightly as Kelley would have — and her heart breaks as she watches Kelley shake her head through her tears, whispered promises falling from her lips.

The tears stop the night before, because Lauren spends 18 hours cooking with Ali and Becky buys too much expensive wine and they end up sharing stories drenched in love for Hope, some about her time on the pitch, most detailing long hiking adventures and random moments with awkward fans, Hope pushing Tobin into the pool, cursing at Jerramy when he said he loved her, throwing a pillow smack into Kling’s face the first time her defender pulled off a prank.

Kelley is silent, but a smile curls her lips from time to time. Emily, in her place on the couch next to her, arms interlocked and fingers brushing, finds some solace in that, even if the smile never reaches her eyes.

And then the day of the funeral begins, and it begins with tears, with Kelley curled in bed and refusing to move.

“If I don’t get up, I don’t have to do this,” she mutters, and Emily curls around her, pressing kisses to her shoulders. “I can’t do this, Em.”

“You can,” Emily says, and it’s a lie because she’s not sure if she can even do it, not to mention Kelley, but it’s a lie she must tell. “You have to.”

Kelley holds both sides of the altar when she speaks. She clutches at the wood, and Emily watches carefully from her pew in the third row, keeping the tears from her eyes. Kelley doesn’t look away from her as she shuffles her papers, but Emily can feel Becky’s hand on her arm, warm and comforting.

“Hope was a lover and a fighter,” Kelley begins. Her voice cracks, and she rubs at her eyes, then looks back at Emily. “Which was scary to say the least.”

The small crowd laughs, and she smiles slightly as she looks down at her paper, at the words she memorized and never dreamed of saying.

“The first time I met her, I tried to talk to her and she— well, she did her best to tell me to screw off.” She laughs to herself. “I spent years trying to break her down, and I think I honestly just tired her out in the end.”

She relaxes as she speaks, grip lightening on the altar as she jokes about kicking Carli out of her seat in the back of the bus, as she recounts the first time they got drunk off champagne and a gold medal victory. There’s something wistful in the way she speaks, as if she’s recalling better days, and it aches in Emily’s bones.

“She believed in me better and deeper and more fiercely than anyone else,” Kelley said, the same words she’d read to Emily again and again to conclude her speech, the words gnawing at her now as Kelley smiles softly at Jerramy, who nods, eyes slightly misty. “She was my best friend, the one who always cared most. And I’m going to carry that with me, because God knows I’m going to need Hope for the rest of my life.”

They fly home the next morning, straggling to hug and kiss their teammates, their family. And everything might seem okay, might seem alright, if Kelley weren’t so quiet.

She’s quiet in the mornings, when Emily wakes up to find her on the porch, coffee in hand, staring at the woods that sprawl behind their house. She’s quiet over meals, asking to watch movies every night, turning on a sports game before they even sit down to lunch. She’s quiet when they run, when they lift together, when run errands, even when Emily forgets to fold laundry two days in a row. And she’s quiet in bed, asleep before Emily can even try to touch her, whispering soft “I love you”s that somehow feel empty.

And finally, finally, after three weeks without touching, without talking — at least about anything of weight — something cracks just slightly in Emily.

“Kell, can you at least try?” They’re raking in the front yard, a second batch of autumn leaves coating the half-dead grass, and Kelley isn’t humming to herself, isn’t stuffing leaves down Emily’s shirt, isn’t playing air guitar on her rake.

“Try what?” She gestures at the leaves, eyes dead of her typical glitter of humor. “I’ve done, like, twice as many as you.”

“Not that.” Emily steps forward, laying her rake down slowly and dropping both hands to Kelley’s shoulders, thumbing at the thick fabric of the Washington sweatshirt that she put on this morning and that she had pointedly ignored. “You can talk to me about this.”

“About what?” Kelley is glaring down at the ground.

“About Hope.” She steps slightly closer and her heart sinks when she feels Kelley flinch. “You can talk to me about this.”

“I don’t want to talk to _you_ about Hope,” Kelley mutters, twisting out of her grip, and there’s something in the way that she says that word — “you” — so accusatory and angry, that hits Emily as a final blow.

“She died, Kelley.” Emily doesn’t mean to shout but her voice is strained with volume. “She died and that sucks and I get it—“ 

“You don’t get it!” Kelley swivels, eyes narrowed and Emily swears she’s never seen her so fierce and desperate and broken. “You don’t get it, there’s no way to get it. She’s gone, I loved her and she’s gone, she’s—“

The fight dies as soon as it started, because the tears are coming suddenly and ferociously and it’s the most Emily can do to get her arms around Kelley before they’re on their knees again, and it’s the first time Kelley’s cried in weeks but it feels like it’s all happening again.

“I loved her,” Kelley whispers, and Emily smooths her hair, kisses her head, whispers apologies.

“I do understand,” she murmurs, when the sobs have subsided and Kelley is limp against her chest. “For weeks, I’ve been thinking what I would do if—“

Her voice cracks, and she can feel Kelley looking up at her, but she can’t bring herself to cast her eyes down.

“I know how much you loved her because that’s how much I love you,” Emily whispers. “And I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t know how to tell you to recover, because if I—“ she sucks in a breath, voice weak “—if I lost you, I couldn’t ever move on.”

They are silent, the only noise their ragged breathing, as Emily clings to Kelley and Kelley clings to Emily. They hold onto each other that way for minutes, maybe hours, but eventually Kelley is pressing kisses to Emily’s face for the first time in weeks, and it hurts, it hurts to love someone like that, to lose someone like that, but they hold onto each other because it’s easier when they’re not alone.

“I’m sorry,” Emily whispers, and Kelley shakes her head. Because it’s not okay that Hope is gone, it’s not okay to lose that much love, it’s not okay to hurt this hard.

But Emily is holding her, and she is strong and patient and gentle. And she isn’t Hope, because she’s soft around the edges and dances like an actual idiot and makes Kelley feel warm like Christmas morning every day.

And that’s okay. Because Hope is gone and that hurts, and it will hurt every day, and the ache will stay like this, numb and resilient, and it won’t go away. But Emily is here, and her kisses taste like cinnamon and she knows Kelley from the inside out. 

And when Emily is there, it makes Kelley think for a second that things might be okay.


End file.
